One
by Pheo
Summary: Nothing more needed to be said. He´d said enough already. GS Songfic.


Summary: Nothing needed to be said. He had spoken enough already. GS Songfic, Angst/Romance.  
  
Rating: R. Be warned.  
  
Disclaimer: Don't own em. Won't ever.  
  
Spoilers: Yup. Aren't there always? My take on an ending to "Butterflied." Lyrics are from U2's song, one of the best GS songs out there, in my humble opinion.  
  
One by Pheo 1.22.03  
  
"Is it getting better,  
  
Or do you feel the same?  
  
Will it make it easier on you,  
  
Now you got someone to blame?"  
  
Grissom had clearly overreacted.  
  
How many times had he told her not to get emotional over cases? Countless, he was sure. Yet here he was, practically living at the crime scene, refusing to let anyone else help.  
  
He couldn't even bear to hear her. He wouldn't even talk to her. Any time he saw her-heard her-he couldn't help but think, that's just a ghost. Sara's dead.  
  
He held his face in his hands, wishing the thoughts away. He would find something to nail this case or he would die trying.  
  
If he didn't, he knew he would die of the consumption of it. Would it really matter? After all, he had felt dead for some time now.  
  
She couldn't believe how this case was affecting him.  
  
She knew she looked like the victim. He didn't even want her to see. He had done everything in his power to ensure that she wouldn't see the victim's face.  
  
Of course, Grissom's actions rarely stopped her. She had seen the girl's face.  
  
Sara stared at herself in the bathroom mirror, easily visualizing herself on the coroner's slab. Her face would be pale and still. Her hair would fall limply around her shoulders. Her naked body would be cold to the touch underneath the sheet-perhaps like a freshly caught fish would feel- and instead of the steady flow of blood, nothing would be felt beneath her skin. No movement, no pulse, no life.  
  
She shuddered and stepped away from the mirror.  
  
She strode out of the bathroom, promising herself she wouldn't brood over this anymore. She had a case to solve.  
  
"You say  
  
One love  
  
One life  
  
When it's one need  
  
In the night  
  
It's one love  
  
We get to share it  
  
It leaves you baby  
  
If you don't care for it."  
  
She stood outside the interrogation room, staring at the man who owned her heart. A declaration of love had been made, and while it certainly wasn't upon a garden trellis over yonder windowpane, it still left her achy. He blamed himself.  
  
She watched as their suspect exited the room, leaving Grissom alone to his misery. He stared unknowingly back at her, looking so lost. His eyes downcast, his lips pursed, he looked as if he hadn't slept in months. She could infer that his appearance was due to the loss of a solve, that his interrogation "tactic" had failed, but his surprising display of emotion proved that wrong.  
  
His haggard appearance was due to his feelings for her.  
  
He had not meant to disclose his so much. He hadn't even known what he was going to do. He felt so powerless. He simply stared at the mirror, looking at himself, at a man too little and presumably too late. He knew he was a coward; he knew that risks were in need of taking in order to attain greatness.  
  
He also knew that risks taken often led to failure. How many cases had he dealt with where a love gone sour had driven someone mad? How many lost lovers went insane after being left, after the glow of newness had faded into nothing?  
  
He knew staying on the safe ground would cost him completeness, but perhaps the safe ground would be better than the nothingness.  
  
"Did I disappoint you?  
  
Or leave a bad taste in your mouth?  
  
You act like you never had love  
  
And you want me to go without."  
  
She continued to stare into the empty room long after he'd exited it. She made no effort to still the streaks of saltwater that streamed down her cheeks. The dull throb in her chest was the only indication that she was alive at all; she seemed to stop breathing.  
  
He rounded the corner, brushing at his own face. His eyes came upon her and he stopped. His form took on a mirror to her own still life. The rest of the lab ceased to exist. The world outside faded into nothing, and two souls, connected since the dawn of time, shimmered, parallel, and called to one another.  
  
She jumped, breaking the spell, and stared at him bleakly. He made as if to step forward, but stopped. Her heart pleaded with him. Just one step. She raised her eyebrows, a silent question. Just one step and I promise to meet you halfway.  
  
He turned away.  
  
"Well it's too late  
  
Tonight  
  
To drag the past out  
  
Into the light  
  
We're one  
  
But we're not the same  
  
We get to carry each other  
  
Carry each other  
  
One."  
  
She curled herself into a ball in the center of her bed, twisting the sheets around her into a womb of cocooned comfort. It was a wonder there were any tears left. The haven in this bed had been periodically doused with them for quite some time now. Wrenching with each sob, she couldn't believe he had admitted defeat  
  
I couldn't do it  
  
and continued to live in his failure. She had been right there and he still left her alone, retreating to his solitude. Perhaps he was right; perhaps if he had given in to their pull, he would have put everything else up for loss. In becoming whole, he very well could have lost everything.  
  
But he very well could have kept it all and then some.  
  
She breathed in heavily, gasping through her tears. Burying her face into the coolness of her pillow, she prayed for sleep to come, knowing it was a futile wish.  
  
No amount of exhaustion would will peace to come tonight.  
  
"Have you come here for forgiveness?  
  
Have you come to raise the dead?  
  
Have you come here to play jesus  
  
To the lepers in your head?"  
  
The warm touch upon the back of her bare arm gave her a start, and she looked up accusingly into a pair of broken eyes. Narrowing her own, she swallowed and demanded an explanation.  
  
"Why are you here?" Her voice shook violently.  
  
His lips trembled and he couldn't speak. He leaned forward, reaching out to touch her face. She turned abruptly and he dropped his hand.  
  
She started to ask him how he'd gotten in-she wanted to ask if he came to cause her more misery-but then he spoke.  
  
"Please," he croaked, and she turned to look at him.  
  
The man who stood before her was not someone she knew. There were no pretenses, no hidden meanings behind guarded remarks. There were no pointed, confident glances behind a genius exterior.  
  
This man was crippled, clutching a damaged heart between his fingers and offering it to her without a plate, raw.  
  
"Did I ask too much?  
  
More than a lot?  
  
You gave me nothing  
  
Now it's all I got  
  
We're one  
  
But we're not the same  
  
We hurt each other  
  
Then we do it again."  
  
She bit her lip, shaking her head. Though he was presenting her with the ultimate gift tonight, she knew his pattern. She knew he could scare himself away easily enough without her aid, and she wasn't about to help. No matter what he wanted right now, he would convince himself otherwise in the morning.  
  
He shocked her by inching closer, reaching out to cup her jaw. She was powerless to the fire that blazed from the tips of his fingers and could not pull away. He had turned the tables around on her. Her heart leapt into her throat. Persistence was not something Gil Grissom was known for-it probably never would be-but tonight it ran through his veins like blood.  
  
"You say  
  
Love is a temple  
  
Love a higher law  
  
Love is a temple  
  
Love the higher law  
  
You ask me to enter  
  
But then you make me crawl  
  
And I can't be holding on  
  
To what you got  
  
When all you got is hurt."  
  
Though her own face had been reeling with heat from despair, his still burned as it made first contact. Once his lips crashed upon hers, hope welled within her, and she pulled him closer beside her. Suddenly he was everywhere-he was the air she breathed, the atmosphere encasing her. Electric incandescence pulsed between them, and they winded into an infinite spiral of limbs.  
  
His hands were in her hair, on her neck, cradling her back. He sought to mold himself into a perfect sheath that would cover her from any harm. Her only thought was to become him, to be inside his skin, to feel him inside her own. Thrashing cumbersome restraints-some losing buttons, some tearing along the way-were thrown carelessly about as they sought the closeness they had evaded for years.  
  
Their forms melded together, a symphony of skin, trading essence.  
  
"One love  
  
One blood  
  
One life  
  
You got to do what you should."  
  
Tangling within her, he knew no other blatant way to say what needed to be said than to unite with her. At first contact she gasped, and he dared not look away from the dark glistening pools beneath him. He had to watch her face-had to make sure she understood. Yearning to taste the saltiness at the hollow of her throat, he strove to maintain eye contact, desperate for her to hear what he was trying to say.  
  
This was not about lovemaking. This was about  
  
"One life  
  
With each other  
  
Sisters  
  
Brothers."  
  
coming home.  
  
"One life"  
  
His message was clearly reflected back to him. She moved in rhythm with him, pulling him closer, striving to make him fill her with himself. There was no going back  
  
"But we're not the same"  
  
and neither wanted to go back. She felt his release building with her own and welcomed it freely, and when the world exploded into a sea of white light  
  
"We get to carry each other"  
  
there was nothing left but a solid, single creature, crafted into perfection through two sculpted, symmetric halves  
  
"Carry each other"  
  
that had always been meant to be  
  
One. 


End file.
